How pleasurable to be ending –
well, almost, for a visit to Robert le
diable at Covent Garden still beckons – my operatic year on such a high
note! The Theater an der Wien is now generally acknowledged to offer
substantially more interesting fare than the Vienna State Opera, the latter’s
great orchestra notwithstanding. Indeed, during a sojourn of just over a
fortnight in Vienna, the Staatsoper could summon up nothing that was not of the
Italian nineteenth century; the only prospect I could even begin to face was La bohème, until I realised that remained
in a production by the ultra-vulgarist, Berlusconi-supporting Franco
Zeffirelli. Not for the first time I was led to fond remembrance of Boulez’s
great clarion call from a 1967 interview with Der Spiegel: ‘To a theatre in which mostly repertoire pieces are
performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera – it
is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses
into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant
solution?’ The Theater an der Wien has avoided the deep, one is almost tempted
to say insurmountable, problems arising from a repertoire system by adopting instead
the stagione principle: no pointless,
barely rehearsed revivals – if indeed ‘revival’ can remotely be considered the mot juste for Zeffirelli et al. – of moribund works and
productions, but bespoke productions, such as this new staging of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler: hardly, I admit, a ‘modern
opera’, but a great, unaccountably neglected, work from a century that still receives bizarrely short shrift
from so many houses. The results, at least on this occasion, spoke for
themselves. (Exemplary programmes are produced too.)

Albrecht of Brandenburg (Kurt Streit)

Hindemith remains a deeply
unfashionable composer. To a certain extent that is not undeserved. His absurd
claims about ‘tonality’ as a natural force, ‘like gravity’, do not help; history
has undoubtedly proved Schoenberg right. The concept of Gebrauchsmusik, even if more sophisticated than one might expect,
likewise remains problematical at best, many would say untenable.Moreover, some of the accusations
hurled at Hindemith’s music are not unfair in particular cases: there is a good
amount of grey, even turgid stuff to throw out as bathwater, before we arrive
at fine babies such as Mathis, surely
the composer’s most singular masterpiece. Its message of an artist, Matthias Grünewald,
painter of the Isenheim Altarpiece, disillusioned by attempts to involve
himself in politics during the sixteenth-century Peasants’ War, who ultimately
has his artistic gift restored to him, has particular resonance, even within
the context of ‘artist operas’, given Hindemith’s own plight during the Third
Reich. It is far more than that, of course; there is (religious) fanaticism; there
are love and renunciation; there is artistic patronage in all its complexity;
there are artistic inspiration and the lack thereof; there is the fascinating, compromised yet wise
figure of Albrecht of Brandenburg. In a sense, as one of my Twitter followers
remarked the other day, it is everything Pfitzner’s Palestrina ought to have been, yet is not. (The latter work retains
a cult, which seems to be not entirely dissociated from the composer’s
repellent nationalist politics.)

Bertrand de Billy gave a more
impressive performance than I have previously heard from him. Whereas his
Mozart has tended towards the anonymous, this was a powerful reading which,
courtesy of tirelessly committed playing from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, penetrated
to the core of Hindemith’s musical imagination. What can readily sound like
Busoni without the sense of fantasy – in a sense, though only in one sense, it
is a bit like that – here resounded with dignity, counterpoint and form
defiantly present, reasserting their presence against musical philistinism whether
of the 1930s or of today, and allied more closely than some of Hindemith’s
previous operatic work, to dramatic requirements. Choral singing, from the Slovak Philharmonic Choir, was of the highest standard throughout: weighty yet never in the slightest diffuse, and capable of impressive dynamic contrast and shading.

The cast was strong too, in
some cases very strong indeed. Wolfgang Koch proved an heroic Mathis. If
occasionally his voice tired towards the end, that fitted perfectly well with
the drama. Otherwise, his multi-faceted portrayal – kindly, thoughtful,
tortured – was as impressive for its verbal acuity as for its command of
musical line. It is, quite simply, a privilege to hear so committed a
performance as his. Kurt Streit was an unfailingly intelligent Albrecht. It
could not be said that his vocal performance was always the most beautiful to
listen to, but dramatic concerns were of greater importance. Franz Grundheber
seems incapable of growing old; his Riedinger, the wealthy Protestant on whose
money Albrecht is dependent, was just as well observed as any other performance
I have heard from him. Manuela Uhl, as his daughter Ursula, and Katerina
Tretyakova as Regina, daughter of the peasant leader, Hans Schwalb (a
performance of evident conviction from Raymond Very), both offered at times
ravishing vocal performances matched by fine stage presence and sense. All of
the ‘smaller’ roles were well taken, right down to the individual peasants who
made the shocking rape scene (Countess Helfenstein its victim, harrowingly
portrayed by Magdalena Anna Hofmann) truly come to life.

Mathis (Wolfgang Koch) and demons

Keith Warner’s production
furthered that too, of course. That particular scene, in which the production
arguably goes further than the libretto, acquired its power as much through the
striking attention afforded every member of the peasant mob as through the idea
itself. As a turning point in which Mathis is impelled back towards art, it is
crucial – and certainly proved so here. Class hatred – the term may be
anachronistic for the sixteenth century, but so, by definition, is a subsequent
artistic treatment – and mass psychosis did their work, just as they did when
Hindemith was writing. Much the same could be said of the book-burning we witness. At the centre of the production lies an extraordinary
giant statue of Christ crucified, prefiguring the altarpiece to come, taking
form during the mistily staged Prelude, piercing our consciousness during the
action just as its agonising nail does Christ’s foot, and subsequently coming
apart, inducing and encompassing both Mathis’s fateful dream and the artwork
itself. The sixth-scene dream, in which, confronted not only by figures from
his – and the opera’s past – and a chorus of demons, but also by Saints Anthony
and Paul, the latter in Albrecht’s guise, is staged with a fine eye both to the
torment and to the potential consolation afforded by artistic creation, even
during, perhaps especially during, times of political torment. The insanity of
the dream-world, flailing demons and all – a splendidly writhing contribution
from the Statisterie des Theater an der Wien – gains focus and eventually
direction from the Pauline intervention. (Surely this is St Paul’s sole
operatic appearance to date? I should gladly be corrected.) Mathis is thereby
enable to do his work and prepare for death: a sobering and, in the best sense,
‘authentic’ vision.

All considered, then, this
was a triumph for the Theater an der Wien, for the estimable artists engaged,
and not least for Hindemith himself. Cameras were present in the theatre; let
us hope a DVD may be in the offing. Any
chance, perhaps, of Busoni’s Doktor Faust?

I saw this opera nearly 20 years ago, when New York City Opera was at the peak of it's performance, and I loved the opera. Truly let us hope for a dvd of this production. I would love to see this cast. Thanks, as always, for a compelling review.